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An amateur architect, and proud of it
China's surprise Pritzker winner
Patrick D. Hazard
The so-called Nobel Prize for Architecture mostly goes to quirky types like Frank Gehry, a headliner who justifies the publicity needs of the Pritzker Architecture Prize's sponsoring hotel chain. Not this year!
Wang Shu, a 48-year-old autodidact from Hangzhou, is the first Chinese citizen so honored. (I.M.Pei had long been an American when he got the Pritzker.) Wang earned his first degree (at the Nanjing Institute of Technology) at the age of 23.
Even after he got his M.A. from Nanjing in 1988, Wang didn't go to work as an architect. Instead, he headed for the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou, where he conducted research in the environment and architecture in relation to the renovation of old buildings. Not until almost a year later did Wang go to work on his first architectural project: the design of a 3,600-square foot youth center for the small town of Haining (near Hangzhou), which was completed in 1990.
For the next decade Wang worked with craftsmen to get actual experience in building— without the responsibility of designing structures. In 1997 he and his wife, Lu Wenyu, founded their professional practice in Hangzhou, with the beguiling name of Amateur Architecture Studio. "For myself, being an artisan or a craftsman is an amateur," he explained, "or almost the same thing."
Cannily, Wang has recycled the pieces of abandoned structures to create stunningly new replacements. For example, in designing the Xingshan campus of the Chinese Academy of art in Hangzhou, he reused two million tiles from demolished traditional houses.
"Everywhere you can see," Wang told the New York Times, "they don't care about the materials. They just want new buildings, they just want new things. I think the material is not just about materials. Inside it has the people's experience, memory— many things inside. So I think it's up to the architect to do something about it."
As a child, Wang wanted to be an artist or writer, but his musician father and school librarian mother encouraged him to study science and engineering. He compromised by studying architecture. The humanism shows in his recycled Chinese materials and the importance he places on the "handicraft aspect" of his work. Wang scorns much of what he calls the "professionalized, soulless architecture as practiced today."
Wang says he approaches design the way a traditional Chinese painter would; he studies the settings— whether cities, valleys or mountains— for about a week as the design materializes in his mind. For a visual treat, see his most significant achievements here.
Wang's stuff is gorgeously idiosyncratic, but almost impossible to put into prose. Now, if we can only get the Pritzker narchitects to think as freshly.
Wang is now the director of the Chinese Academy of Art. Lucky students!
Wang Shu, a 48-year-old autodidact from Hangzhou, is the first Chinese citizen so honored. (I.M.Pei had long been an American when he got the Pritzker.) Wang earned his first degree (at the Nanjing Institute of Technology) at the age of 23.
Even after he got his M.A. from Nanjing in 1988, Wang didn't go to work as an architect. Instead, he headed for the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou, where he conducted research in the environment and architecture in relation to the renovation of old buildings. Not until almost a year later did Wang go to work on his first architectural project: the design of a 3,600-square foot youth center for the small town of Haining (near Hangzhou), which was completed in 1990.
For the next decade Wang worked with craftsmen to get actual experience in building— without the responsibility of designing structures. In 1997 he and his wife, Lu Wenyu, founded their professional practice in Hangzhou, with the beguiling name of Amateur Architecture Studio. "For myself, being an artisan or a craftsman is an amateur," he explained, "or almost the same thing."
Cannily, Wang has recycled the pieces of abandoned structures to create stunningly new replacements. For example, in designing the Xingshan campus of the Chinese Academy of art in Hangzhou, he reused two million tiles from demolished traditional houses.
"Everywhere you can see," Wang told the New York Times, "they don't care about the materials. They just want new buildings, they just want new things. I think the material is not just about materials. Inside it has the people's experience, memory— many things inside. So I think it's up to the architect to do something about it."
As a child, Wang wanted to be an artist or writer, but his musician father and school librarian mother encouraged him to study science and engineering. He compromised by studying architecture. The humanism shows in his recycled Chinese materials and the importance he places on the "handicraft aspect" of his work. Wang scorns much of what he calls the "professionalized, soulless architecture as practiced today."
Wang says he approaches design the way a traditional Chinese painter would; he studies the settings— whether cities, valleys or mountains— for about a week as the design materializes in his mind. For a visual treat, see his most significant achievements here.
Wang's stuff is gorgeously idiosyncratic, but almost impossible to put into prose. Now, if we can only get the Pritzker narchitects to think as freshly.
Wang is now the director of the Chinese Academy of Art. Lucky students!
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